RS

FRONT PAGE CONTRIBUTOR

Organizing for America is still underperforming. Shocker, I know.

Background: Organizing for Action is just as bad at pushing actual policy positions during Obama’s second term as its previous incarnation was as bad at pushing actually policy positions during Obama’s first term. I know that this will disappoint everybody who was expecting OfA a +5 Vorpal Juggernaut, but this was not exactly an unexpected outcome. Well, unexpected by some: there’s possibly an emotional aspect to some analyses these days*. OfA also seems to be not bringing in the cash – the phrase ‘potholes in the road’ was used, which is code for We seriously overestimated how much more money we could squeeze out of our usual donor base. But don’t worry: there’s still hope!

Even donors who acknowledged the group was off to a slow start predicted that just as the campaign heated up, so will OFA.

“When the president really starts to push these issues like immigration, that’s when you’re going to see this operation going at full speed,” said one top Obama donor. “This is why people elected the president. It wasn’t necessarily about him but what he could do.”

…”When?” At this point, the word should be “if.” For that matter, if there is a grand bargain of some kind on immigration reform then OfA is going to be completely incidental to the situation. There isn’t a Republican in the House who really cares too much about what Organizing for Action thinks about him or her, and all the poorly-coordinated, funded, and delivered protest actions in the world isn’t about to change that. What will change that? …The Democrats taking back the House. Which OfA singularly and epically failed to do in 2012.

On the bright side, probably OfA will declare victory anyway and the media will let them. Which is annoying to us, but more than made up for in midterm elections when a bunch of people who have told themselves fairy stories for two years discover objective reality**.